I'm yielding up my title.

fredintoon

fredintoon

Fred Hill, S'toon.
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I am no longer Saskatoon's worst bodger.
I yield up the title to our new home's PO.
My wife and I just moved into a modest bungalow because the 4 sets of stairs in our previous home
were getting hard to cope with, one flight up from the kitchen/dining/lounge level to use the washroom or one flight down to watch TV and
yet another flight down to do the laundry or use the other bathroom.
Finding our new home's main floor bathroom only had a hand-held shower I re-upped my soldering skillsand did the appropriate upgrade.
So far, so good.
Then the basement bathroom's shower started to dribble at the bath outlet but otherwise stopped doing anything.
Inspection showed this:-
IMG_0149.JPG
Pex into copper into pex into that grey pex that ain't recommended into a brass shower fitting and yes!
the copper tee is the shower feed going sideways. And it's no longer working.
Gawdelpus!
 
Lol Fred. I see stuff like that all the time. Like the electrical box in a shower stall wall.......:yikes:

Ah well, the right man is on the job now.
 
Bloody he!! Fred - that’s pretty grim.

Glad you’re on the case.

Pete
 
TwoManyXS1Bs said:
Yikes is right. I'd want to dig a bit deeper everywhere, like undersink plumbing, LPG fittings, ductwork, elektrikal, ...etc.
Click to expand...

The house survey (yes, I did get one) boiled down to "The house is basically sound, everything works but some of it's systems are done in a weird way."
Even the basement's cobbled-up arse-backwards shower worked. Until it didn't.
My plan is to fix each screw-up as it fails in service. Being retired, what else have I to do?
Until it's warm enough to ride, that is.
Today's task is to go talk PEX with the experts at Centennial Plumbing.
 
Like you, I thought I had to revive old soldering skills recently. A trip to the local hardware for some fittings had them looking at me as if I had been away for the last 30 years, (which was about right). They directed me to the "shark bite" no solder plastic fittings that do not leak and can be used on pipes that are still full of water, even some pressure!
A serious increase in the per unit cost but the quick results has me sold.
 
lakeview said:
Like you, I thought I had to revive old soldering skills recently. A trip to the local hardware for some fittings had them looking at me as if I had been away for the last 30 years, (which was about right). They directed me to the "shark bite" no solder plastic fittings that do not leak and can be used on pipes that are still full of water, even some pressure!
A serious increase in the per unit cost but the quick results has me sold.
Click to expand...

Hi lakeview,
soldered joints are still alive and kicking here in 'toontown although they did offer me sharkbites as an alternative when I was buying
the main floor shower parts. That install went easy for me as it was run totally in copper.
Sharkbites may work just great but they're kinda big and ugly and they'd increase my costs for sure as I still have a whole bunch of
solder fittings left over from some decades of previous domestic fix-ups.
It's the downstairs disaster that's making me weep. Centennial Plumbing sez '"run it all PEX except for the mixer to bath spout which we install in copper"
They'll even rent me the PEX pliers at $10 a day.
My only leak so far is PEXing to the gray pseudo-PEX that I'm stuck with as it comes out of a hole in the basement floor.
It's a slightly thinner wall than PEX so the trick is to wrap a slice of aluminum disposable pie plate around the PEX ring so it gets crushed a little tighter.
 
fredintoon said:
Hi lakeview,
soldered joints are still alive and kicking here in 'toontown although they did offer me sharkbites as an alternative when I was buying
the main floor shower parts. That install went easy for me as it was run totally in copper.
Sharkbites may work just great but they're kinda big and ugly and they'd increase my costs for sure as I still have a whole bunch of
solder fittings left over from some decades of previous domestic fix-ups.
It's the downstairs disaster that's making me weep. Centennial Plumbing sez '"run it all PEX except for the mixer to bath spout which we install in copper"
They'll even rent me the PEX pliers at $10 a day.
My only leak so far is PEXing to the gray pseudo-PEX that I'm stuck with as it comes out of a hole in the basement floor.
It's a slightly thinner wall than PEX so the trick is to wrap a slice of aluminum disposable pie plate around the PEX ring so it gets crushed a little tighter.
Click to expand...
The Grey pex is most likely Polybutalane. (that is spelled wrong) and shark bite does make a fitting to adapt from PB to pex. It will seal better then anything else you try. The part number is U4008LF. that is if the numbers are the same in states as in Canada. or they make a crimp fitting with a ring to adapt from the PB to PEX as well. the best thing to do is get rid of the PB as much as you can. It bad pipe. and the crimp style rings are good but make sure they are installed correctly. Not sure what rings you are using there are many out there to choose from. This is just what i have learned from 14 years selling plumbing supplies
 
Hi Jmann/rsor,
so there's an adapter, eh? I shoulda guessed. Thanks for the tip.
Now to decide if I should pay another day's rental on the pex-crusher while I drive to Lowes
to get an adapter or hope my super-crush trick keeps working.
Or just keep watching that pex-poly joint and do the fix if it starts to drip.
 
The link to home depot was the crimp pex fitting I was talking about. And I’m with rsor I would get the correct fitting and pay the extra rental. That is me also talking I have easy access to all the fitting. I actually use the new everloc fitting in my house when I replumb sections. But I sell the fitting and can borrow the tool when needed.
But I would hate to see another thread down the road started by you saying well I came home after a long weekend to a flooded basement. Now It may hold for years and years. But me personally for peace of mind I would get the correct fitting.
 
All this plumbing talk has me wondering what the lucky person to get my house after I'm gone will think.

See his house has two separate water systems that are somewhat merged together.

The original system is your basic country well water system with a tank type electric hot water heater. Then later due to very hard water causing problems with hot water heater we hooked up the cistern that was built into the basement when we built the house. So now we have a deepwell pump for the well water and a tank mounted pump for the cistern water part.

By a combination of some piping and hand valves the two systems are connected to allow either to supply water to the whole house if needed. Standard arrangement is to have hot water heater supplied with the rain water cistern as well as the cold water side of the shower.

Well that was till we put on an addition that included a second bathroom with shower. To avoid trouble when we had company with running out of hot water for showers we went with a tank-less hot water heater for the hot water in the second bath.

On the rare occasion that cistern runs out of water close one valve and open another and everything works off the well water or the other way around and the whole house can run off the cistern if there is a problem with well pump or water level.

Sometimes I think I should draw up a schematic for the systems and detailed instructions on how it works and what each valve is for and which ones are to be open or closed for "normal" operation. But what would the fun it that be?

The only good thing is this is a one story ranch with 95% of the plumbing visible either in a semi-finish basement or the crawl space under the addition!
 
rsor said:
I see the Lowes link does not work, but they do have them as well.
Click to expand...

Hi rsor,
there's a Lowes 5 minutes away from our house.
Had an interesting conversation with Lowes helpful ESL gentleman about that pex-poly adapter.
He gave up on my verbal description and together we found it on his computer screen.
Yes! Lowes sell it. Alas that this particular Lowes is out of stock of them.
WTF! Bought a Cdn$ 75.00 Pex crusher & cutter combo pack from him anyway
as I realized I've still got a basement laundry tub to build.
Bought two pex-poly adapters from Centennial when I took their rent-a-crusher back there.
 
Atta boy Fred - you'll get it all sorted out and Mrs. Fred (or would that be Mrs. Toon?) will be very happy with you - which is good thing just before riding season begins....;)
 
The Lowes store by my place sounds a lot like that.....out of stock of whatever it is that I need, even worse before they reno'd it from a Rona to a Lowes.

Their stainless steel fastner section would drive me crazy with their restocking policies.

Anyhow, good to hear that you found the adapters, the peace of mind you will have from doing it the right way is worth it. But I'm sure from reading your posts, that you know that.

Good luck, ever have a plumbing question, here to help.
 
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